A journey of life after retirement: Visit to www.baandada.org

Saturday, 2 November 2013

I am indeed lucky to have met Dada Ramakrishna on Friday 1 November morning in Sangklaburi (SKB) market for breakfast. I have visited www.baanDada.org Children;s home website many times but have not written to them before. This meeting makes my trip even more fruitful.

Signboard to BaanDada

BaanDada is also a project under the neo-humanist organization. Baan means “house” in Thai and Dada means “brother” in Sanskrit. BaanDada currently supports 61 disadvantaged children, of which 50 live in Baandada and 11 live away from home to attend university.

Dada Ramakrishnan (his real name is Ricardo) came from the Philippines and has settled in Baan Dada for many years now. Dada brought with him many experiences especially in music (Filipinos are very good at) and vocational training. This explains why the Baan is very orientated to vocational and musical training. Baan Dada is located in Huay Ma Lai, another town some 20+ KM from SKB,

Dada explained his big plans for the organization as he took me and sister Fa through his facilities. His facilities are even more basic than www.BaanUnrak.org located in SKB. However, besides the required facilities like library, canteen, basketball court, dwellings for boys and girls, volunteers, there are music room and workshop.

Canteen

To supplement the cost of operations, Dada needs to ensure the extra land is able to provide part of the food required and also generate some income. The land has to be reasonably fertile with easy access to water, the two elements are lacking around his land. The home practices organic farming and rely on hired farmers to assist in farming. The boys only help as additional farm hands.

Besides attending regular school, the children are given training so that they can help to generate some pocket money when they study out the home. Currently, there are students studying in University in Nakhon Pathom

Music room

Like many voluntary organization, finding donors and fundraising have always been a problem especially during the current economic difficulties. As the children gets older and more entering University, the problems of finding sufficient fund to finance their studies is becoming a nightmare. As schools and universities reopen after the break, Dada was in SKB town yesterday to do the banking. I noticed that the Christian children home have better facilities than BaanDada. I commented to Dada that the city church goers on Sunday can provide part of the operating cost as the donation boxes are passed around. For Neo-humanist organization, the incomes are quite irregular and depend on the irregular donations and fund raisings.